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Longreads

The Week’s Best Longreads: The Daily Beast Picks for October 6, 2012

The Daily Beast picks the best journalism from around the web this week. By David Sessions.

10.06.12 4:45 AM ET

The League of Dangerous MapmakersRobert Draper, The AtlanticWho’s most to blame for our divisive politics? How about the gerrymanderers quietly deciding where your vote goes. Inside the dark art and modern science of making democracy a lot less democratic.

Did ExxonMobile Pay Torturers?Ian Shearn and Laird Townsend, Mother JonesThe oil giant claims it has no responsibility for atrocities committed by the government soldiers it hired to protect its plant in Indonesia. Will the Supreme Court agree?

Down and Out in the Top 10Nitsuh Abebe, New YorkThe indie-rock quartet Grizzly Bear just released a hit record and sold out Radio City Music Hall. But forget about renting a private jet. Some of them don’t even have health insurance. Welcome to the new rock-star economy. Swallowed by the London WhaleSusan Dominus, The New York Times MagazineThe rise and fall of Ina Drew, whose career at JPMoran came to an end over a $6 billion mistake.

China in RevoltEli Friedman, JacobinFew in the West are aware of the drama unfolding in today’s “epicenter of global labor unrest.” A scholar of China exposes its tumultuous labor politics. The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed MatadorKaren Russell, GQLast fall, one of Spain's greatest matadors took a horn to the face. It was a brutal goring, among the most horrific in the history of bullfighting. Miraculously, Juan Jose Padilla was back in the bullring—sí, fighting bulls—a mere five months later.